This is one of the rare silent films that, instead of explaining via too many intertitles, seems to use too few: perhaps if I were more familiar with the original short story it would be easier to follow. The basic plot deals with a bullfighter who takes up with a blonde foreigner and neglects his former interest, a local girl: she in turn is apparently loved silently from afar by a crippled antiquarian, who is perhaps loved by his rescued girl-servant. At any rate, it seems to be the action (through jealousy or in innocence?) of this girl that provokes the final crisis.
Musidora plays both the spurned and the new lover, although the latter is only sketchily characterised as a shallow party girl. The heroine herself is a brooding creature, although it didn't help that I wasn't always clear as to the reasons for her actions: the character and/or actor I found most compelling was Paul Vermoyal, playing the hunchback with surprising sympathy and expression. This was the one character in the story whom I ended by caring about, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that as the plot developed his role was more significant than it at first appears.
This is a gloomy picture: it's probably not giving too much away to say that it ends badly, in one way or another, for just about everybody. (There is a lengthy and separate Epilogue after the end of the main action; it's not clear just why the film is structured in this way, unless to emphasise the impact of the violent climax.) There are many scenes of bulls and bull-fighting, both inside and outside the arena, which given the era are presumably filmed for real (in some of the later scenes the camera seems to be struggling to keep up), since the male lead is played by a real-life matador, Antonio Canero. Again, it would probably have helped to know something of the conventions of the sport to grasp what was going on, and why!
"Sol y sombra" has some tense moments and sympathetic scenes, but it doesn't come across as especially great, and for the non-aficionado I couldn't really recommend it as entertainment. Chiefly of interest as a surviving film directed by Musidora of 'Irma Vep' fame.
